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----- Original Message -----
Myke, No, not yet. I really appreciate the opportunity given to all
of us to post our resume on the AJUG web site.
In my current experience in Atlanta there really are no jobs
at all. Every single job that I have pursued in VaporJobs.com (can't use a real
name) has either been "pulled" by the client, already filled, or doesn't even
get mentioned when I occasionally get called back by a representative of the
posting organization. I was told by one company that if they didn't post
something they could not continue to use the service so I guess what they do is
just continue to use job descriptions that have no substance. One staffing
company representative told me that I could not be considered unless I could
provide a file containing a sample of some code that I had written. When I said
that all of the code I write contains a copyright which means that I can not
comply, his response was that I would not be considered. The fact that you had
to produce a code sample was actually stated in the job posting. This is not
just VaporJobs.com. I have encountered several companies that have wonderful
postings for jobs that have been posted for many months and several others that
stated that they currently have a hiring freeze in effect while the jobs
postings remain. All of these entities actively solicit and accept resumes which
leads me to believe that the Dilbert cartoon that we saw today on this list is
actually quite close to the truth.
Another thing that I have noticed is that if you don't have
the years of experience which sometime seem to meet or exceed the time the
products have existed, you're not going to be considered. What HR people and
recruiters seem to have lost is the fact that this field is about constantly
learning and acquiring skills, not becoming as specialized as a structural steel
welder. If we can't become more flexible in our hiring practices we are going to
go down the same rathole that auto manufacturers went down and all software
development will probably go offshore. As an example of this particular gripe:
my efforts to get a job working with embedded systems. An embedded system is
basically a computer, usually small, contained in a larger system such as one of
the currently popular set-top boxes which does all sorts of fantastic things
with your TV. I feel that my skills and experience in real-time, digital signal
processing, assembler/C/C++/Java language skills, etc. would allow me to do a
great job in this field. I can't even get in the door ostensibly because I don't
have an exact match for the customers requirements which were copied verbatim by
the staffing company. I say ostensibly because it could be possible that the
staffing company and/or the hiring party does not understand how to evaluate my
skills. Isn't that a hell of a note? We all know by now that most resumes are
qualified by scanning applications and not by people and we also know that
applications are not as smart as the developer, well, maybe not always. A
current guideline is to limit your resume to three pages. If you have been doing
this work as long as I have it seems rather demeaning to have to remove part of
what I think is valuable information that I want my potential employer to see.
Could it be that whomever made this recommendation was not aware of the great
price-performance ratio of the new disk drives.
I love this field and I am passionate about learning as much
as I can and doing as many things as I can. I will not chop off my resume just
so I can look like anybody. Over the years I have invested a lot of money, time,
and energy in soaking up technology-related information and I am by no
means unique. I consider myself a scientist, an engineer, and an artist. Have
you ever seen some of the CVs (curriculum vitae) of accomplished university
professors? They are quite long and I am sure that no one ever told them to
"dumb it down".
Hang in there Myke. We may need to work in some other town for
a while. Good Luck to everyone.
Steve
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